The Age of Not Believing
by Smurfette
Summary: Buffy reflects upon the changes in the Scoobies since Welcome to the Hellmouth


TITLE: The Age of Not Believing   
AUTHOR: Smurfette   
EMAIL: smurfette3001@yahoo.com, purple_smurf@bigpond.com   
DISCLAIMER: Not mine. 'The Age Of Not Believing' is sung by Angela Lansbury, and is taken from the Disney 1960s film 'Bednobs and Broomsticks'. The poem at the end is 'Sleep Brings No Joy' from the amazingly dark and morbid mind of Emily Brontë. Buffy & co belong to Joss & co. Joss wrote the opening quote for the episode 'Lie To Me'.   
SPOILERS: Post-'Smashed' (I even read the transcript for this. I hope you're satisfied -- I'm scarred for life here! Although *loved* **spoiler**'s Tom'n'Nic comment!). Does anyone out there *not* know she had sex with Spike? But covers just about everything that's... like... *ever* happened.   
CLASSIFICATION: Swearing, sexual references. PG-13...? I don't know American ratings!!!   
PAIRINGS: B/S and B/A references. And just about every other cannon relationship!!   
SUMMARY: Buffy reflects on the changes the Scoobies have undertaken since 'Welcome To The Hellmouth' (trans: Smurfette rants about what the hell happened to her favourite show and tries to pass it off as Buffy's thoughts).   
DISTRIBUTION: Whatever. Just email me.   
AUTHORS NOTES: For the record: THERE IS NO SPOON. I still refuse to believe that the series has continued into season 6/3, but this has been sitting on my hard drive since I heard about 'Smashed'... it's pretty much my rant about how things have changed, and not always for the better!! I heard the song recently, and I thought that it pretty much summarised how so many of us Shippers are feeling at the moment. And Emily Brontë was just... a morbid genius who writes far too many things that can be related to B/A (not just Cathy and Heathcliff!).   
DEDICATION: This is for everyone who told me to "write more" and "have more faith in my writing". This is all your fault!   


Buffy: Nothing's ever simple anymore. I'm constantly trying to work it out. Who to love or hate. Who to trust. It's just, like, the more I know, the more confused I get.   
Giles: I believe that's called growing up.   
Buffy: I'd like to stop then, okay?   
Giles: I know the feeling.   
Buffy: Does it ever get easy?   
Giles: You mean life?   
Buffy: Yeah. Does it get easy?   
Giles: What do you want me to say?   
Buffy: Lie to me.   
Giles: Yes, it's terribly simple. The good guys are always stalwart and true, the bad guys are easily distinguished by their pointy horns or black hats, and, uh, we always defeat them and save the day. No one ever dies, and everybody lives happily ever after.   
Buffy: Liar.   
-- 'Lie To Me'   


I walked in the door, the pain, anger, confusion and loneliness I had managed to temporarily numb during my "encounter" with Spike returning with interest. I waited for the expected shame and self-disgust to arrive with them... but they didn't. 

What did arrive was the need for a shower. 

I just fucked Spike. A soulless demon. A demon who's not meant to be able to harm humans but hey! check out the bruises. 

I just fucked Spike. Repeatedly. I just fucked Spike until the building fell down. 

I just fucked Spike. My mortal enemy (but then, he's not mortal, so how does that work?). The evil demon. The Big Bad. The thought once repelled me... but now, I just don't care. 

I just fucked Spike. 

**//When you rush around in hopeless circles**   
**Searching everywhere for something true**   
**You're at the age of not believing**   
**When all the make believe is through//**

Who am I? What in Hell have I become? 

Spike said that I came back "wrong". Did my soul come back wrong? My body? I don't know. What makes me, *me*? Did that come back... or did I leave the part that makes me Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, the Scourge of the Underworld, the queen of punning and able to hide her pain so easily... did I leave that behind? 

Do I even know who I am anymore? This *thing* who would fuck Spike -- *Spike*, of all things. This person who would fuck Spike, and think nothing of it. Who would fuck Spike to escape the pain. 

This person who walks around in this shell of a body is not known to me anymore. When did the world become so cold? When did I change so much? 

When did my world become such a foreign place? 

**//When you set aside your childhood heroes**   
**And your dreams are lost upon a shelf**   
**You're at the age of not believing**   
**And worst of all you doubt yourself//**

Sometimes... sometimes I wish we could go back. Go back to when things were simple, and yet seemed so complicated. 

Back to when the goodguys, though they never wore white hats, were at least *good*. And we thought that we could win. Back to when Angel and I had a future as a regular kid and her cradle-robbing creature of the night boyfriend. When we thought saving the world would have some celestial reward, and that the dead might just stay dead. 

When I thought that dying would be a terrible thing. 

Back to when Dawn was just my annoying little sister, sitting in the background scribbling in 'The Dawn Chronicles', as I moaned about how I wished I were an only child. 

Back to when the Master was the worst thing we could possibly face, and we lived in fear of him getting out of the Hellmouth. When we had research parties in the library, and Willow ate all the jelly donuts. Research parties where Xander and Cordelia bickered like crazy, until they found a janitor's closet (or hid in the stacks, as need be). 

Go back to research parties with Oz's profound, monosyllabic comments. Back when Giles wore tweed and made that weird cluck-cluck sound with his tongue when he was mad but too British to say anything. Go back to when Willow was just starting to look at magick for fun, or educational fun. 

Go back to the time when I entertained the possibility of a normal life, and thought I might one day get my happily ever after with Angel. 

Back to when we were innocent to the perils we would face. 

Back to when my Mom was alive and I could tell her how much she means to me. 

Back to when I knew me. 

**//You're a castaway where no one hears you**   
**On a barren isle in a lonely sea**   
**Where did all the happy endings go?**   
**Where can all the good times be?//**

But things change. Time marches on, and we can never really go back. 

Nothing was ever really the same after my seventeenth birthday. Angel died and never really returned. And then he left, and took something I never really regained with him. 

Xander and Willow made their little mistake, and Cordy left the group. She left a void... her tactless comments that lightened the load a little, a void that Anya almost fills, but not quite. 

Oz drifted long before he left to control his wolf. Like my seventeenth birthday, it seems that Xander and Willow's mistake had other, long-reaching consequences. 

Mom died, and now Giles has left, and it seems we're losing Tara. 

I wouldn't be able to recognise the Willow I see today in the Willow of Sophomore year. That shy, stuttering girl... the brain of the school... the babbling, long-haired innocent I once knew. I know people change, but sometimes I just look back and... 

And Xander... who would have guessed that *Xander* would become the mature, responsible one of the Scoobies with the steady job and fiancée? 

I would never have thought that I would live long enough to bury my mother, or that Angel and Giles would both leave me "for my own good". 

I certainly would never have guessed that Cordy would wind up working for Angel... or Angel working for Cordy... 

All that time I moaned about how I wished I was an only child... it never happened. I *was* an only child, but I would have laughed at anyone who told me that the little sister, busy scribbling in her diary in the background, wasn't actually there and is the result of a spell by a group of monks. 

And I'd have had anyone who told me I'd be fucking a soulless demon -- a demon who stalked me -- a demon who tried to kill me repeatedly -- a demon who isn't Angel -- I'd have had anyone who told me that certified as insane, even by Hellmouth standards. Lock them up and throw away the key, coz the entire idea was laughable. 

**//You must face the age of not believing**   
**Doubting everything you ever knew**   
**Until at last you start believing**   
**There's something wonderful in you//**

But as I climb the stairs, the bills still piled high on a table lacking my mother's touch, I know that however much I wish for it, I cannot go back. What's gone is gone. 

I slowly walk into my room, involuntarily remembering the moments in which Angel would sit outside the window I am now closing. I cannot go back, back to the innocent past or to the peaceful oblivion of heaven. 

Whatever I would have thought of the situations now find myself in... however I would have felt about them five years ago, I am in those situations now. Life doesn't turn out the way we want. 

I lay myself down upon my bed, my muscles an aching reminder of my evening's activities. Foregoing the shower, I pick up the volume of poetry -- one that I found in the mansion so long ago -- and I wait for dawn. 

_Sleep brings no joy to me_   
_Remembrance never dies_   
_My soul is given to misery_   
_And lives in sighs_

_Sleep brings no rest to me_   
_The shadows of the dead_   
_My waking eyes may never see_   
_Surround my bed_

_Sleep brings no hope to me_   
_In soundest sleep they come_   
_And with their doleful imagery_   
_Deepen the gloom_

_Sleep brings no strength to me_   
_No power renewed to brave_   
_I only sail a wilder sea_   
_A darker wave_

_Sleep brings no friend to me_   
_To sooth and aid to bear_   
_They gaze on how scornfully_   
_And I despair_

_Sleep brings no wish to knit_   
_My harassed heart beneath_   
_My only wish is to forget_   
_In the sleep of death_   
  



End file.
